Yesterday, Baby Girl and I were sitting in the living room, hanging out when we heard a BANG against the window and saw a bird fall to the deck.
We went to the window, where we saw the bird laying there, moving it's beak, and I said, "Sometimes the birds just need some time to get back up, then they'll fly away. They don't always die.". She and I watched while the beak moving became less and less...until it was nothing.
I began to formulate lots of "well honey, everything dies" comments and imagined the bird funeral we'd hold later and waited for the horror and the tears and the sadness...turns out, I shouldn't have worried.
Baby Girl took one last look, declared, "Yup. He's dead." and walked away.
Well then. Okay.
Carry on.
We went to the window, where we saw the bird laying there, moving it's beak, and I said, "Sometimes the birds just need some time to get back up, then they'll fly away. They don't always die.". She and I watched while the beak moving became less and less...until it was nothing.
I began to formulate lots of "well honey, everything dies" comments and imagined the bird funeral we'd hold later and waited for the horror and the tears and the sadness...turns out, I shouldn't have worried.
Baby Girl took one last look, declared, "Yup. He's dead." and walked away.
Well then. Okay.
Carry on.
I was getting ready to read how you explained death to her, but she didn't need it, LOL...poor bird though.
ReplyDeleteI had to unexpectedly tell son about death after watching Barnyard the movie. The father died (did not realize that) and I explained that he is with God now and safe in heaven. He repeated it a bunch of times and every so often.
My dad tells the story about how he put is cherubs (me and my sister ages 4 and 2) to bed early and they went out to the barn to butcher the rabbits. At the most gruesome moment, he hears a little sound behind him and he turns to see us staring at them with huge eyes. He kneels down and goes into a long discussion about the circle of life, farm animals vs pets, and so on. He asks us if we have any questions for him, and one of us (I'm thinking me as I'm the oldest) said, "Can I touch it's eyeball?" YIKES! (no, i'm not a pyscho or anything - just more used to farm life than he realized! ;-)
ReplyDeleteLove the innocence of little ones! Always so matter of a fact.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter is like that too! Just when I think she's going to take something hard she just shrugs her shoulders and walks away. The other day we were at the pet store and she ooh'd and aah'd over the tiny mice then walked up to one of the employees and asked them if they would feed one of the those mice (which she just declared were the cutest things ever) to the snake so she could watch it eat it! Gross!
ReplyDeleteHa! I wouldn't have expected that response either. Too funny.
ReplyDeleteWow...amazing how well she took that! I was trying to think how to explain it. Beautiful picture!
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